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There is good news for the dodo. It is still extinct but
it has at least been given a slightly less absurd image.
A lifesize recreation of a dodo made for the University
Museum of Natural History at Oxford has it looking slimmer,
taller and less gawkish than the common image of the flightless
bird, which died out in the 17th century.
Using sketches from sailors who saw the birds in their
native Mauritius, and dodo bones, zoologists at Oxford have
produced a model of how they believe the dodo looked. The
museum also has a preserved dodo head and foot. Prof Keith
Thomson, director of the museum, said the model was "leaner
and meaner" than dodos portrayed in paintings, particularly
the most famous image painted by Jan Savery in 1651, which
is kept at the museum.
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| Painting (1651) of the Dodo by
Jan Savery |
The museum at Oxford must carry a share of the blame for
the dodo's poor reputation. Lewis Carroll, the Oxford mathematician
Charles Dodgson, was inspired after visits to the museum
to lampoon the dodo in Alice's adventures in Wonderland.
Prof Thomson said : "it has always been caricatured as fat,
slow and ridiculous. "In fact, we now think it could move
quite fast.
If you were a 17th century sailor who disturbed a dodo
you would have quite a fright, if it came at you. The poor
old dodo has had a bad press and I am sorry that we have
had something to do with that. I hope we can now put things
right." The flightless bird, a distant relative to the pigeon
probably became extinct because of disruption to its habitat
and the introduction of cats and rats by sailors. The university
is now hoping the extract DNA from the remains in Oxford
to learn more about the evolution of the dodo.
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